The five tastes that can be detected with your tongue

 

Taste	Chemical components	Products in which they can be found
Sweet	Glucose, fructose, aspartame	Sugar, soft drinks, icing
Sour	Lactic acid, acetic acid, phosphoric acid	Lemon, yoghurt, sauerkraut
Salty	Sodium chloride (NaCl), ammonium chloride (NH4Cl)	Cooking salt, pickled meat, salty liquorice
Bitter	Quinine, caffeine and phenols	Coffee, wine, beer
Umami (Ve-tsin)	Monosodium glutamate, which is an amino acid (part of a protein)	Old cheese, Chinese food and snacks, e.g. crisps.

The tongue is covered in taste papillae

The taste papillae are folds on your tongue. They are necessary for increasing the surface area of your tongue. There are three types of taste papillae on your tongue:

1.    Mushroom-shaped papillae (Fungiform papillae)

These are located on the front two thirds of the tongue; they are embedded with an average of four taste buds.

2.    Circumvallate papillae (Vallate papillae)

These are large dome-shaped papillae which lie in a V-shape on the rear part of the tongue. They are embedded with an average of 250 taste buds.

3.    Leaf-shaped papillae (Foliate papillae)

These papillae lie along the length of the tongue and are embedded with about 1300 taste buds.

 

Taste buds are therefore found on the taste papillae. In Figures you can see a microscopic image of a taste bud. Taste cells are located in the taste bud.

Molecular Gastronomy, June 2010.